Things work at
two levels in India, that of paper and that of fact. On paper, for instance,
we have section 167 of the Indian Penal Code under which a public ser-vant is
to be hauled up for preparing a false document; we have section 192 of the same
code under which the punishment for fabricating evidence that leads to con-viction
for murder is the same as for murder itself; indeed, on paper, we have the entire
Criminal Proce-dure Code which provides safeguard after safeguard for the accused.
On paper we have sections 25 to 27 of the Indian Evidence Act which state that
no confession made to a police officer shall be used as proof against a person
unless it has been made in the immediate pre-sence of a magistrate. On paper
we have Article 20(3) of the Constitution which decrees that no one can be compelled
to testify against himself.

And if you read
commentaries on these sections and Articles or the judgements in which they
figure, you will find them becoming more and more liberal, more and more esoteric
with each passing year.

That is what is
on paper. In practice we have the police lockup. With the help of some of our
correspondents I have surveyed 45 police custody deaths that occurred during
the last year in seven states and Delhi. Several states-even UP, and Bihar-could
not be covered for reasons to which I shall return in a moment. Even so the
patterns are so uniform one death to another, from one state to another, that
generalisations are possible.

First, thc victims
are invariably poor. You can decide for yourself whether this is so because
the well-to-do do not commit crime in India; or, if they do, be-cause they are
not hauled in; or, if they are hauled in, because they are not interrogated
vigorously (and in that too whether that is so because they confess more readily
or because the police feel that vigour in such cases is liable to become public
knowledge); or, finally, if they too are questioned just as vigorously as the
poor, it is just that they are a hardier lot and can survive torture more cheerfully.
In any event, the custody- literally, the "guardianship", "care",
"safe-keeping" of the police is fatal only for the poor.

Second, several
of them seem to have been hauled in on no charge at all. Latoor Singh, a well
respected Harijan of Hodal, the last Haryana township on the Delhi-Agra road,
landed in police custody because he got into a heated argument with the SDM
about the construction of a Harijan chaupal. Next, the police said, his body
was found in a well. Outraged, the people gheraoed thc police station. Police
opened fire, killing two. Gangu, a Bawaria of villace Dehina in Mahendragarh
district in Haryana was picked up, not because hee was wanted in a crime, but
because the police could not locate the Bawaria they were looking for and thought
that the Bawaria, sitting then at the village bus stand, must know where the
other fellow is. That was on November 1, 1979. By November 5 he was dead. (His
wife Misarli, who used to take him food every day, and was told on November
5 that Gangu had died, filed a private complaint, and sent letters to the Prime
Minister, Home Minister etc., the usual lot. On Jan-uary 23, two days before
her complaint was to come up for hearing, a police party came to her house,
dragged her out and shot her at point blank range). And so on.

Hauling a person
in without "arresting" him and without registering a charge has become
common prac-tice in states such as Punjab and Haryana. The man is formally "arrested"
and charges are registered only later when he has confessed to the crime under
the customary methods. If he does not confess or if, through the thrashing,
the police get convinced that he is indeed the wrong man or that he has learnt
the lesson they wanted to teach him, he is let off with the warning that should
he talk... Both Punjab and Haryana have institutionalised the more productive
methods of interrogation by establishing a separate Criminal Interrogation Agency,
an outfit of dregs specially skilled in the swadeshi methods of brutality.

Third, in the case
of persons who were formally arrested and in whose case we have been able to
obtain information about the charge, in the overwhelming number of cases the
alleged crimes were puny-theft (a goat in one case, copper wire in another),
the casual complaint of another that the victim had occupied his land, ticket-less
travel (believe it or not). In four cases the charge was serious: interrogation
in relation to a murder in two cases, attempt to murder in one and murder in
the fourth. But remember these are deaths in police custody. That means that
in none of the cases was the guilt of anyone of them established, In each case
the matter was still being investigated. In-deed, the hauling in-of three of
these four victims was the first step in the investigation.

Fourth, in seven
of the 45 cases the bodies were so badly mauled, the evidence of external and
internal injuries was so considerable that even the authorities had to eventually
register cases of murder against policemen. Five were reported as having died
from natural causes ("snakebite", "heart failure on way to the
hospital", "suddenly took ill", etc.) Five were said to have
died for mysterious reasons (e.g., "found dead in lock-up"). All the
others are said to have commit-ted suicide.

Now, there are
a few things to note about these accounts of suicide. If the police are to be
believed, suicides almost invariably come in three forms-the Victim jumps into
a well, the victim jumps in front of a running bus (in Haryana the victims are,
as in the case of the 59-year-old Rattan Singh of village Gumana, considerate
enough to dive between the front and rear wheels of speeding buses so as to
spare the drivers the liability that would be theirs if the victims were crushed
by the front wheels of the vehicles) and third, the victim hangs himself by
his lungi or his belt (the last in his lockup or, as in a case reported from
Tamil Nadu, in the open courtyard of the police station).

Quite apart from
the fact that even terminal patients, even those facing execution, do not commit
suicide as readily as these victims accused of theft etc. seem to do, many of
the police accounts of suicide are idiotic. Latoor Singh, to whose case I alluded
earlier, is said to have committed suicide by jumping into a well when he went
unescorted to ease himself in the fields. Now, why did he go unescorted into
the fields when the police station itself has a lavatory which detainees use
all the time? The police in Delhi cantonment started calling Emmanuel in to
question him about a girl who had disappeared. They terrorised him into believing
that he would be held responsible for her murder. Each time he was beaten severely
and told to return the following evening. This went on every single day, every
single day from March 27 to April 10, in this the capital of India. On April
11 he presented him-self as usual at the police station. That evening he was
found lying on a road, badgered and unconscious. He was rushed to one hospital
and then to the other. But he died without regaining consciousness. The police
version: suicide by taking poison. What about the beatings from March 27 to
April10? Why was his body bruised and badgered if all that had happened was
that he had taken poison? And so on. (The girl Em-manuel was said to have murdered
or kidnapped has since turned up).

So improbable are
the accounts of suicide that in five of the cases in which the enraged people
obtained new post mortems, deaths that had earlier been report-ed to have been
by suicide were eventually proved to have been caused by external and internal
injuries.

Next, what action
was taken in the case of the deaths? In the seven cases where, under intense
pres-sure from the public, murder was eventually proven, policemen have been
suspended and murder charges have been framed against them. (As all the deaths
occurred, within the last year, one would not expect any conviction and none
indeed has come). The custo-mary procedure, however, is to assert first that
no action is required as the case is obviously one of suici-de or of death from
natural causes; next, if public pres-sure is intense, to transfer a few policemen;
if that too does not assuage public outrage, to suspend a policeman or two and
then reinstate them (most often in another police station) after few months.
In Gangu's case in Haryana, for instance, the inspector in charge of the CIA
cell has been transferred to Chandigarh. In Emmanuel's case in Delhi, the sub-inspector
and constable who were initially suspended in April have been reinstated and
transferred to another police station within Delhi.

So much for the
patterns in death. Now for five general points First, in no state are deaths
in police custody examin-ed systematically, not by the government, not by any
civil rights organisation, not by the press. In no state is even information
about them collected in a systema-tic manner. In each case, inquiries about
the death are looked upon by the police arid the civil administra-tion as illegitimate
encroachements into their private preserves. And this is why in spite of our
efforts we could obtain little information about IJ.P. and Bihar.

Second, in each
instance where an inquiry was ordered, it had to be wrested after intense pressure
by the people.

Third, remember
that even when torture does not result in death, its effects can be lethal.
Three months ago in Delhi the local police successfully got two young boys to
confess that they had murdered a third boy only to have the latter turn up soon
after the case of murder was formally registered against the first two. (Contrast
the formal provisions of section 192 of the IPC I cited earlier with the fact
that all that has happened to the Station House Officer and two sub-inspec-tors
who had shown such exemplary efficiency in prov-ing murder is that they have
been transferred to a neighbouring police station).

Fourth, contrast
the helplessness of these victims and of those who subsequently take up their
cause with the effectiveness with which the well-heeled and the influential
are able to use the same sections of the Codes, of the Evidence Act and the
same Article 20 of the Constitution to stall proceedings against themselves
for decades.

Finally, note the
strength of the police (which func-tions in these matters as quite the most
effective trade union) and note its causes-the almost total absence of civil
rights organizations and the inability of the people to sustain their anger.
How else would the police get away by merely transferring the guilty or reinstating
them after a month or two?

How would you want
me to end this survey-with the plea that the formal provisions of law should
be adher-ed to, with the plea to the police to be humane, with the plea to the
public to keep their anger from subsid-ing with such unvarying certainty, with
the plea that we build up strong civil rights organizations, with the plea that
the press do its job better? Choose the one you think will bear fruit.